24 June 2011

24June- hmmm...

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here's something that's been bothering me for a little while.for many years i've had a tendency to suck the fun out of some things by over-intellectualizing them or trying to glean a lesson or by trying too hard to get the edges to align. (only some, not all, of the ways i might ruin something.)

this has been a risk, especially, for wine when i'm trying to train servers or, i suppose to a certain degree, customers. i forget that most people simply don't want to know as much about a wine as i want to know and so i go ahead and disgorge a fount of dry information which then dessicates all the juicy fun.So we recently found this wine that we all found incredibly refreshing. the grape, jacquere, is from the rhone alpes in france and is not what anybody would call a well-known grape but in the equivalent of four days we went through roughly nine bottles. these were primarily hand sells (as most of our wines sales must be, really, given how little-known so many of the wines are) which consist usually of a combination of enthusiasm and dispensation of little tastes of wine.and we flew through it! and it wasn't the cheapest thing on the menu, either.naturally, i was jazzed about this because i love it when we can introduce something new to columbia and watch it be embraced but the fact that so many people got it because of a visceral response got me thinking.

they didn't get it because they knew what the grape was or what kind of soil it grew in or what kind of training the winemaker had or how long the winery had been making wine and whether their style has changed over the years. they got it because it's a refreshing, easy drinking wine that, presumably, made them feel good.it reminded me of a time when a rep blind tasted me on a wine on which i spent a good while dissecting in an attempt to figure out the grapes. it had some plump, juicy redness so maybe this grape and it had some earthy notes so it could be this or that. there's something on the finish i'm not understanding (i'll take the third part last) and the color would suggest this but the acid suggests that. i spent so long deciphering two out of three grapes and marveling over the unexpected third grape and then going back to try to taste or smell what the third grape had to offer that, when the rep asked me how i liked it, i didn't have an answer. i'd thought all the feeling out of it and i had to taste it again to taste for enjoyment.this seems like a shame.

now i'm going to over-think this situation.

maybe you have some similar approaches to life, maybe you don't.

maybe the lesson is to balance the comfort experiences and the intellectual? because we need to exercise the mind by challenging it or we'll get rusty at the thinkin'. you know. enjoy the totino's as much as the prime rib. enjoy the three amigos as much as ladri di biciclette.now i don't know how to finish this post without getting heavy handed. (see? suckin' out the energy.)